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@ericawordsmith Hey, there!

So I’m certainly not a guy… but I have had some experience with guys dorms/cabins. My family used to be in charge of Senior High camp every year at a summer camp near where we live… and my cousins and I got to be the deans. We would check on the cabins while they were in the sessions or eating meals to judge them for cleanliness and so forth.

It was honestly kind of interesting. No phones/electronics were allowed at camp, so we would never find any of that stuff. But each cabin we entered was different in its own way. Every year, there would be one cabin that we would deem “the cabin to rule them all” because for some strange reason… it was immaculate. Like, way more than the girls’ cabins. There’s always one that is spotless. It depends on the personality of the people staying there.

But then other cabins… yeah. They were your “typical” guys’ cabin. Beds unmade, clothes everywhere… sometimes the smell would be bad, other times it wouldn’t. But either way, it was a mess. Again, though- sometimes, even with all of the mess, it was better than the girls’ cabins.

But there were a few things that really stood out in certain cabins. One time, my brother and I found a watermelon under the bed. Like, a literal full-size watermelon. And then there was another time when they had bedding hanging from the rafters. Not sure what that was all about. Or the time when we found a completely empty sixteen pack of Mtn. Dew on the first day. These cabins only had like eight/ten people in each.

But we never saw any books. They spent most of their time with each other, I think. Who needs books at camp, right? Every once in a while we might find a board game. But for the most part, the guys just didn’t really come prepared, exactly. They just came to go with the flow. To do the next thing that was planned.

I know this is camp I’m talking about, and not dorms exactly, but I hope this helps. A good thing to keep in mind is that most guys you meet are going to be more focused on the here and now- “what are we doing next?” This is why many of them are so into video games. Of course, there are always guys that despise that stuff because they prefer looking ahead and actually accomplishing something that will help them later in life. But yeah. The biggest tip I have would be to focus on the present when writing about guys’ weird habits of messiness and junk food and video games. XD

(Also, I’m another one of those crazy people that has seven kids in the family.)